Good to Your Daughter
by Faythe Marie
Summary: Fleur's uncertainty about her daughter's upcoming birth grows and grows as the rain falls and falls . . .


_A Note: This is my first attempt at Fleur/Bill. Feedback is very, very appreciated. I hope I've done the couple justice - if you think there's something that could have been done better, please let me know. On the other side of that, if there's something I've done particularly well, let me know that, too. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or setting, just the plot. No money is being made by the publication of this fan fiction._

**Good to Your Daughter**

It rained far too often in England.

This was Fleur's only complaint about her life, now. The rain fed her mounting boredom as the days until her daughter's birth fell away. Bill told her every morning how sweet and lovely she was pregnant, rubbed her sore feet in the evenings and cooked when the task of preparing food overwhelmed her. But during the day, he was gone, and Fleur's only companion was the incessant rain that fell against the cottage roof.

She took up sewing, briefly, under the careful tutoring of Molly Weasley. It confused her slender fingers, requiring far too many minor healing spells to repair the damage of a misguided needle. The sole production of her weeks of toil was monstrous; Molly had pursed her lips and held back what could have been either a chuckle or a word of comfort. Fleur had been thankful she'd refrained. She tried knitting, as well, reasoning that its tools weren't nearly as likely to leave piercing wounds. Unfortunately, she'd known nothing of the significant skill required to properly execute the inconceivably difficult stitches. Time and time again, she set it down and took it up; telling herself that this would be it, she would be an accomplished knitter and would, consequently, be better prepared for motherhood. She wanted to carry herself with pride, like Molly did, to have all the answers to parenthood and to handle their children with the stern, affectionate love Molly always seemed ready to give. She wanted to know that she had the right . . . what was the word? The right _stuff_, she supposed. The right thing that would make her the mother she had to be.

The rain made her so unsure of herself.

Fleur's best skill, the only thing she knew she could do without any doubt whatsoever, was gardening. The garden was her home, her flowers were her comfort. They were her preparation for the daunting task to come. She understood that her flowerbeds needed the water, but the rain prevented her from tending them with the care and deliberation that she needed to give to _something_.

Bill didn't understand. He tried. When she'd told him of her uncertainties, her need to parent before the task was thrust upon her, he'd suggested a puppy, or a kitten. Fleur didn't want a puppy or a kitten. She wanted a baby.

And yet . . .

The thirtieth week of her pregnancy loomed, as did her uncomfortably large abdomen. The tiny life inside kicked and kicked, reminding her that what she wanted would soon be hers. Her nursery, in soft pinks and yellows, was prepared: Preparing the nursery had been one of the first things Fleur did as soon as she knew the child's gender. A small, white dresser held endless dresses and blouses and tiny slacks, sorted by size and then by color. The rain occasionally carried on for days and days: When that happened, Fleur rearranged her daughter's clothes in their dresser drawers. There were diapers, and sheets for the crib, a mobile that played soft lullabies with a flick of her wand. There were socks, and tiny shoes, a small felt hat with a rose stitched on the side. A lopsided blanket - Fleur's only successful knitting venture - was folded in the crib, waiting to carry her daughter. But she still wasn't ready.

"What should we bring her home in?" she asked Bill at least every other day, and he always smiled and patted her belly affectionately.

"I'll leave that up to you. I don't want to come between a girl and her mother, particularly when it comes to clothes."

While this was a completely understandable statement, it didn't help Fleur at all.

"I just wonder if this dress is too complicated for a newborn," she explained, holding up a tiny crushed velvet dress in complex patterns of blue and green. "Will it be too hard to put on her so soon?"

"I don't know, sweetheart," Bill would say. "Maybe you should bring two, just in case."

That was her point, though: She didn't want to bring two. She wanted to know what was best, she didn't want to have to second-guess herself. Her own baby pictures showed the infant Fleur, cuddled in her mother's arms in a gown the most perfect shade of blue. It exactly matched her eyes. Fleur had always wondered if that had been a blessed accident or her mother's design.

_I'm frustrated_, she wanted to say. _I'm tired, and I'm worried, and I'm frustrated. And I hate the goddamn rain!_

Of course, she didn't say that. She couldn't say anything like that. But that didn't mean she didn't want to. She wondered what it had been like for Molly, and for her own mother, in the weeks before the birth of their first child. Had they suffered the same conflictions? Logic told her the answer was probaby yes, although in her heart she couldn't seem to make peace with the idea.

She laid in bed at night, thankful for the sturdiness of the cottage roof, preventing her from hearing the rain's endless pour. Curled on her side, the safest and most comfortable position for a woman as pregnant as she; and Bill held her, curling himself around her. "Will it ever stop?" Fleur asked in the husky tones of sleep.

"You're going to have the baby before long, honey," he replied, stroking her hair.

His misinterpretation was curious, Fleur thought as she started to drift away to dreams. It was several minutes before she corrected him. "No, Bill, I meant, do you think the rain will ever stop?"

"It all stops eventually," Bill assured her.

"But it comes back," she protested, rolling with difficulty onto her other side, to face her husband. In the silvery glow of the moon, she could see the lines across his cheek: A constant reminder of something she hoped to never think about again. "Nothing stays away forever. Least of all this damned English rain."

Chuckling softly, Bill kissed her cheek, cupping her face in his hand. "Does the rain bother you that much?"

"I don't like it at all," she confessed.

"Do you want to move?"

He was kidding, she knew, but the earnest look on his battered face made it hard to take it as a jest. "We've only just moved here. We can't leave." As the idea rolled through her mind, she imagined packing up boxes and finding another home, going through the rigamarole of leaving and arriving and all that it entailed. "I love our home," she said, surprised to find her voice shaking with emotion.

"Do you suppose Victoire will love me?" The question flew from her mouth, unhindered by thought and yet a perfect portrayal of all that had been in her soul since the conception of their daughter.

"Oh, Fleur," Bill sighed, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face to hers, so that the uncontrollable tears streaming down her cheeks would be shared between them. "Of course she will. How could she not? You're her mother."

"And what exactly does that mean? I don't know that a girl has to love her mother, or that a mother has to love her daughter, for that matter. I don't know what's to happen."

"That's not something you need to worry about, now or ever. She'll love you, and you'll love her. It's not debatable. You can't avoid loving your mother, particularly when she's as lovely as you are." He kissed her nose, gently, and her lips. "Go to sleep. You need your rest."

He meant, of course, that he needed rest. So Fleur kept the rest of her soul that was waiting to be spilled, and watched instead the rain spilling against the window.


End file.
